Walk, Bike, Eat Plants : REDUCE, Reuse, Recycle

I’m back in Thailand and since I’ve returned I’ve had two interesting animal finds, unfortunately they were both dead. I don’t have a picture of the dead reticulated python I removed from the road but I do have some photos of a dead draco aka flying lizard that I took this morning. Just after I took a couple photos of the dead one I was able to get a photo of a live one on a tree as they usually are. In addition I’ve included a few other photos I took this morning along with last night’s beautiful lunar halo.

I returned to Thailand earlier this month and have been here catching up on some thoughts and things that I put on hold while in Malaysia however as promised I will be going back to visit the kids in Penang next week. Before I do I decided to do the 40 hour water fast that I wanted to do around New Years but put off until I was back in Thailand. As I write this 30 hours in I thought it’d be a good opportunity to challenge you to not eat for a full day and to follow up with an improved plant based diet and healthier eating habits. In the meantime here’s a challenge you can do right now.

Enjoy the full moon and I’ll chime in again a month from now,
d

P.S. Here’s a slow loris photo I managed to get a couple weeks ago with a camera in one hand and a flashlight in the other along with a few recent photos of the kind of habitat you’re likely to find a slow loris or me living in. I also saw a colugo aka kubong a couple weeks ago but I was unable to get a photo. Speaking of forest gliders I had a paradise tree snake on my porch earlier this month and although I haven’t seen any flying dragon lizards this year I did have a couple fly past me while I was in the forest a few months ago.

Last night I was out walking around enjoying the sights and sounds of some of the local frogs and toads. Then today at the market I saw some more frogs but they weren’t making any sounds and I didn’t enjoy seeing them. As far as the locals are concerned there’s nothing wrong with ripping the skin off of a living frog and letting it slowly die over a period of what I guess could be hours. As is generally the case when I see something that is just plain wrong I spoke up in hopes that it will help raise awareness and influence future behavior. If you’re going to eat an animal or its parts and excretions then you should know how it was caught or raised and how it was killed and be alright with that otherwise you shouldn’t eat it.

P.S. If you want to see seven terrible seconds of what I was talking about click here, if not enjoy the happy toad photo below.

Bullfighting is another instance where culture and tradition overrides empathy and humanity and anyone participating in these events and/or opposing an outright ban of them should be ashamed of themselves. It’s great to see the good people of Spain take to the streets to oppose this barbarism that is still taking place in their country.

Earlier this week as I walked home in the 35C/95F tropical midday heat in a sleeveless shirt, shorts, and sandals with my umbrella to protect me from the fury of the sun I passed by a little dog that was wearing a very dirty and probably very smelly shirt. I had passed by the same dog before but the owner wasn’t around however this time they were so I gave them my standard dog-clothes-tropics speech which is basically just “The weather here is hot everyday year-round. I’ve got a shaved head and I’m still hot. Could you imagine how hot that furry dog is with clothes on? Do dogs really even need to wear clothes?”.

I walked by the same place this morning and the little dog was naked! A small victory which was the result of laying out the logic, encouraging people to think, and letting them arrive at the proper conclusion on their own. I never said dogs shouldn’t wear clothes nor did I say they were idiots/wrong for putting clothes on a dog in the tropics for their own sick amusement but after I explained the situation whatever conclusion they came to led them to remove the shirt. Lets just hope they didn’t remove it only to replace it with a hoodie tomorrow or perhaps in order to shave the dog in order to make it easier to cook now that it doesn’t remind them of a human.

Rest assured the little dog won’t be shaved and eaten as they don’t eat dogs in this area however the pigs, chickens, fish and many other living breathing pain and fear sensing animals sure do have it rough. Maybe I should start putting clothes on them to see if it gets people to start treating animals in more ethical ways. If you have a dog please make sure it stays in a private enclosed area or on a leash and that it’s been spayed or neutered.

A good article on an important topic except although it told readers what zoonotic diseases are it didn’t tell us how to stop them. Disease surveillance in other animals in addition to humans is great, but what we really need to focus on is keeping humans away from animals. This could be done by working harder to protect the world’s remaining forests. For example, by not consuming palm oil or purchasing wood unless you know where it came. If you are unable to confirm where something came from or how it got to you then always assume the worst.

Second we can advocate to end the pet trade whether it’s with domesticated or wild animals by persuading people to opt for human friends rather than some animal they can dominate and won’t call them out for being wrong and challenge them to better themselves. Finally if we really want to stop or at least slow the emergence of new and potentially devastating diseases making the leap from animals to humans we can stop eating animals starting with the ones most likely to cause us problems, e.g. those which are raised on a diet of antibiotics and genetically engineered feed in filthy factory farms.

I’m strongly against the kidnapping, imprisonment, and exploitation of dolphins, orcas, or any other animals for human amusement because in addition to being immoral in itself it’s also what makes brutal dolphin hunts so profitable. If people want these hunts to stop they need to stop supporting/visiting the establishments which fund them, e.g., zoos and aquariums.

Also before going all anti-Japan please scroll back a few posts and watch the video on the factory farming and realize just because you pay someone else to do the mistreating and butchering doesn’t mean you’re any less a part of it. More or all plants less or no animals and if you do eat animal derived food please make sure it comes from responsible sources.

Current food production is sufficient to feed the over 7 billion of us here now and it will even be sufficient to feed the over 9 billion who will be here in the near future… provided the arable land we use and the food we grow is used to feed people rather than livestock and provided we stop wasting so much of the food that is produced. The reason why so many people on this planet are without access to adequate food isn’t because there isn’t enough to go around it’s because they don’t have the money to buy it. Therefore in addition to making better use of the food that’s already being grown and the land that has already been cleared to grow it eliminating extreme poverty should be the primary goal of anyone serious about feeding the world. Not cutting down more forests and using more toxic chemicals to produce more food that the people who need it most can’t afford to buy all while continuing to waste so much of it by feeding it to livestock and placing much of the food that is produced into plastic bags and sending it off to landfills.

I stopped using straws years ago and this is one of the reasons why. Do you still use straws? Maybe you should stop using them too or start using your own reusable one.

I don’t know how long we’ll live but I do know the straws we’ve used thus far in our lives will be around long after we’ve died and decomposed. To me at least it’s disturbing to know that the environmentally harmful waste I’ve unnecessarily created as a result of my own ignorance will outlast me. I don’t know where all our old straws will eventually end up however I imagine some will end up in leaky landfills, others buried in the soil future generations will use to grow their food, and some of them in the bellies of birds, fish, and other poor creatures.

Let this post and these images be a reminder to bring your own reusable food boxes, water bottles, and shopping bags and to say NO to unnecessary and environmentally harmful disposable items because in today’s overpopulated and over-consuming world it’s critical that we all work to reduce the negative social and environmental impacts of our consumption.

Dog loving animal abusers are people who treat dogs like humans while at the same time support the treating of pigs, cows, and other livestock like inanimate objects via their consumption of factory farmed milk, eggs, and, flesh. If you have a dog please make sure it’s spaded or neutered and always on a leash in public. If you want a dog please don’t support dog breeders and pet shops and instead adopt one from your local animal shelter. Also please clean up after your dog each time it makes a mess in public and as you do ask yourself if you really need another dog after the current one dies especially if you live in a densely populated area.

Thank you,
One of many people who is sick of being chased by dogs, dodging their excrement, hearing them bark, and feels that humanities resources would be much better spent on people rather than on pets.